Never mind that Tim Burton is 53 and, having generated $3.3billion at the box office to date, one of Hollywood’s most successful directors. This is a man in touch with his inner child – even if his appearance, with his Robert Smith haircut, suggests he’s more in tune with teen Goth angst. From his 1985 feature debut, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, to his lavish adaptations of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Alice In Wonderland, Burton’s films burst with childlike wonder.

Tim Burton poses at the premiere of Dark Shadows (Picture: Reuters)

So it’s no surprise that his latest film, Dark Shadows, takes him back to his youth, growing up in Burbank, California. The original Dark Shadows, a long-running 1960s TV show, was seminal viewing for eight-year-old Tim.

‘It was this strange thing – this weird, supernatural soap opera on in the middle of the afternoon,’ he explains, when we meet at Air Studios in Belsize Park. ‘It had this weird tone about it. It just felt different from everything else in my life around that time.’

While his mother, Jean, ran a gift shop and his father, Bill, worked for the local parks department, Burton gorged on the show’s quirky blend of melodrama and tales of the unexpected. ‘It explores the fact that most families are screwed up,’ he notes. ‘I remember growing up… my family life wasn’t that great so I’d always try to find other families that I thought were nice families. It seemed to be a lot of Italians. The mother was always a great cook. So I had a lot of Italian friends growing up.’

Dark Shadows, which ran for 1,225 episodes, centres on the quirky Collins clan – a family that includes Barnabas, a 200-year-old vampire. It’s no surprise that Burton’s old friend and frequent collaborator Johnny Depp plays him; in fact, it was actually fellow Dark Shadows fan Depp who instigated the project. ‘We have a fondness for semi-obscure, weird things,’ says Burton.

As far as he’s concerned, Barnabas is the perfect character for Depp. ‘I think Johnny as an actor is more comfortable being a Boris Karloff type of actor than a leading man,’ he says. ‘Barnabas is a strange character. He’s been locked in a box for 200 years so when he comes out, the world is new to him. The thing we loved about the original series, and we tried to keep, is that he’s a reluctant vampire. He’s more of a romantic family man who happens to be a vampire.’

If you were expecting Twilight or True Blood, forget it; this is more like a twisted Addams Family. Heading the Collins household is Michelle Pfeiffer’s Elizabeth, Burton’s first outing with the actress since she slipped into that PVC catsuit in 1992’s Batman Returns.

‘When she did Catwoman, that was one of my favourite performances from any film I’ve worked on,’ he says. ‘But I hadn’t spoken to her in almost 20 years. And then she called me up and said: “I never really cold call but if you do Dark Shadows, I’m interested.”’

Helena Bonham Carter in Dark Shadows

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Burton film without a turn from Helena Bonham Carter, his off-screen partner (and mother of his two children, Billy, eight, and Nell, four) ever since he cast her as in his 2001 ‘re-imagining’ of Planet Of The Apes. For their seventh time working together, Burton gave her the role of Elizabeth’s live-in shrink. ‘I’m not sure how good she felt being offered the part of an ageing, alcoholic psychiatrist. But she took it,’ he says.

Setting his Dark Shadows in 1972, Burton also turned the clock back to the most traumatic time in his young life. ‘That transition from being a child to a teenager was unpleasant and awkward,’ he recalls. ‘In fact, doing research, I started to get physically ill. That era felt strange at the time and it still feels strange today. Just all the weird stuff that was around – like mood rings, pet rocks and weird troll dolls.’

Even shock rocker Alice Cooper’s cameo in the film took Burton back to his high school years (an early short he made was accompanied by Cooper’s song Welcome To My Nightmare). And it seems there’s no stopping his current nostalgia. October sees the release of Frankenweenie, his feature-length, black-and-white, 3D stop-motion-animated remake of his own 1984 short, about a boy who re-animates his dead dog. ‘It’s basically the same story but a bit more like the old monster mash-ups, like House Of Frankenstein,’ he says.

Back then, when Burton was working for Disney as an animator, the short got shelved after it was deemed too scary for kids. For a time it defined him. ‘Once you get the moniker of being the weirdo, no matter what you do, that label sticks,’ he sighs. Maybe so. But he’s probably the most successful weirdo on the planet.